Earlier today Panos Panay and the Surface team were on Reddit to do an AMA. The fielded many questions and left some very interesting responses. A few responses in particular stood out. One thing that many reviewers complained about with Surface Pro is the battery life. The device only gets around 4.5 hours of battery life, which doesn’t even begin to complete with most ultrabooks. This is a big problem considered Microsoft wants Surface to be the future of ultrabooks.

Surface Pro has some new mystery connectors that Microsoft has not explained. Someone on Reddit noticed these and asked Panos about them. His response had some heavy hints in it.

Wow – I’m pumped you caught that – we haven’t announced what they are for but they aren’t an accident! At launch we talked about the “accessory spine” and hinted at future peripherals that can click in and do more. Those connectors look like can carry more current than the pogo pins, don’t they?

If that wasn’t enough a different Redditor asked him about keyboards with extended batteries. Panos replied with everything but an official confirmation:

That would require extending the design of the accessory spine to include some way to transfer higher current between the peripheral and the main battery. Which we did…

There you have it. Will a keyboard cover that can also charge your device be enough to get people over the battery concerns? Adding battery to a keyboard cover is going to add thickness, and then if you add that to the already thicker Surface Pro ultrabooks are starting to look more portable. Battery life is a fickle mistress.